Online Customer Engagement

If you want to get, and keep customers you will need to have a range of strategies for online customer engagement.

As I have written in previous posts, in order for your customers to get to a stage where they are prepared to purchase your products and services, you will need to engage with in a way with them so that they come to know, like and trust you.

Get them to sign up to your email list first!

The first step in online customer engagement is to entice them to sign up to your email list. (It goes without saying that you’ve already done your homework and clearly identified your customer avatar!)

An often used strategy to do get a person to subscribe to your email is to offer your target audience a free gift of some sort which could be any one of the following:

• an eBook
• a checklist
• a free report
• a template, or set of templates
• get people to subscribe to your blog, or newsletter
• get people to subscribe to your podcast
• share some relevant research or case studies with them

Whatever you decide to share it must represent something that is of value to your prospective customer.

Next: Continue to Develop The Relationship

The value of having people on an email list is that you can be in contact with them at any time.

However, your focus here should be to continue engage with your list.

Using your autoresponder series it’s a good idea to follow up with:

• an email that explains what they can expect from you in the future
• a further follow up email explaining in a little more detail who you are, and what your business is all about
• and then yet more emails explaining how you would like to help people on your list
• and then……perhaps make your first paid offer, again something of significant value, but at an extremely low cost

This stage of turning a prospect into a buyer is a critical stage in your online customer engagement strategy.

When your customer has made a purchase from you it signifies that you have established that all important element of trust.

Other Methods of Online Customer Engagement

So far we have talked about the use of email to engage with customers.

There are other important ways of doing this:

1. Provide regular engaging and valuable content on your blog or social media pages (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram etc), and invite comments or feedback
2. Continue to offer the occasional valuable give away
3. Use your website or Facebook page to host live webinars and events

Here’s How To Avoid Burning Your List

If you continually bombard your list with sales campaigns you’re eventually going to really displease people and they will unsubscribe from your list.

I learned long ago a useful formula for ensuring the content I was using had balance, and value to my audience.

Basically the idea is to provide a balanced mix of content to your audience. Therefore any given blog post, email, or web event could be providing:

• Education
• Inspiration
• Entertainment
• Information
• And occasionally a promotional offer

What Is The Ultimate Value Of An Online Customer Engagement Strategy?

Below is a short video presented by international sales guru, motivator and coach Brian Tracy. In the video he explains just how, and why a loyal and engaged customer is such a valuable asset to your business.

He also briefly outlines some strategies for customer retention and loyalty that can be used in any business.